In this shocking account, one mother describes how she overcame an obsessive fear of harming those she loved most

She bears all the hallmarks of a yummy mummy – a slight frame, carefree blonde hair, a country manor home, a wealthy lawyer husband and four gorgeous daughters.

Yet Diana Wilson has a very dark secret. Her story is so disturbing that many will find it hard to comprehend.

She suffered for nearly 30 years from violent, murderous fears of harming others – some so graphic that they cannot be printed.

Diana Wilson was convinced her thoughts would see her locked up in a mental institution should she ever reveal them to anyone

She was convinced that these thoughts would see her locked up in a mental institution should she ever reveal them to anyone. What Diana did not realise was she was suffering from a rarely discussed form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) where symptoms include an obsessive fear of harming others.

Thanks to insightful doctors, Diana was to discover that OCD can be cured with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and she has now tackled her inner demons to the extent that she lectures on mental-health issues.

Diana is holding a silver-framed photo of her four beautiful daughters today aged ten to 16. ‘Ten years ago I was preparing to hand over these little girls I loved to strangers for their own safety, then be driven off to Broadmoor in a Black Maria,’ she says.

She reveals how she simultaneously imagined strangling, drowning, slashing with a razor blade or pushing off an escalator her own family.

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‘More than half of OCD sufferers share this fear of causing harm,’ she says. ‘This disorder is not just about obsessive counting and checking or repeatedly washing hands. There must be thousands out there suffering the same terrors I did but too afraid to tell the doctor about their darkest thoughts.’

It is hard to believe this petite 45-year-old had the prime of her life consumed by cruel thoughts.

Diana talks about her idyllic childhood in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, which she describes as very carefree – until she was eight years old.

‘I started having unwanted thoughts, triggered by a car accident in which good friends of my parents were killed at dusk.

‘It led me to be afraid of the dark and obsessively repetitive in my prayers. If they were interrupted by my parents coming in to say, “Goodnight, darling”, I’d have to start praying all over again. I was terrified if I didn’t, my mother would be killed in a car accident.

‘Praying was the first of many rituals I developed. Another, very common in children, was to run along the pavement avoiding the cracks.

‘I played a lot of competitive tennis and as I got better I began to believe losing a point would mean losing a game.

'My lovely girls': Diana's four daughters who she feared she would harm

‘These irrational beliefs brought my tournament career to an end. They also affected my education and my self-esteem.’

Diana managed to enjoy a couple of years as a ‘ski bum’ after school but then her mental health took a turn for the worse.

‘A hard-hitting AIDS campaign appeared on TV and even though I had never had a sexual relationship, I convinced myself I had AIDS.

‘When I was 21, I moved to London from New Zealand. I taught in a nursery school and had some lovely nannying jobs but was plagued by thoughts that I might have harmed – or even killed – children.

I didn’t resign because, despite the overwhelming thoughts, OCD sufferers are not delusional and I was still able to function.’

It was in this period that Diana met her husband Rob. She became pregnantsoon after they married in 1993 and moved to Kent.

‘Although I was overjoyed – I always wanted lots of children – the thoughts started telling me Rob wasn’t the father of my children,’ she recalls.

‘I actually believed I might be going out at night, meeting men at wine bars or nightclubs, having sex and creeping back to bed in the early hours.

‘Rob would kiss me goodbye in the morning and I’d have this terrible guilt. When he left the house I’d ransack my handbag for receipts from taxis and wine bars, which, of course, I never found.

‘But these overwhelming thoughts happened with each child and I wonderedif the babies would come out looking Chinese or anything except like Rob – even though he’s the only man I’ve ever slept with.

‘My eldest daughter was born in 1994, and my fears then were ofbottles never being clean but also about knives – I was afraid I was going to harm her.

‘With my second baby, it was a fear of drowning. With my third daughterit was strangulation; my thoughts were telling me that in the night I would take the cords out of their dressing-gowns and strangle eachone. This was sickening to the point that I would try not to go to sleep.’

Diana with the youngest of her four daughters now ages ten to 16

Even on relaxing holidays in France, images never left Diana of the harm she might do – something she dared not discuss with Rob.

‘I feared taking each child down to the pond to drown them in the night. So the compulsion then was to put a chair against the door when Rob was asleep, because I thought if I tried to move it he would hear, wake up and stop me.

‘Things finally came to a head when my fourth daughter was born. I’d see Rob’s razors in the bathroom cabinet and have thoughts I would take one out and harm her.

‘Then there was her bathtime and thoughts would come telling me to hold her under the water and keep holding her there, so I had to wash her quickly and get her out so all the pleasure went out of bathing her.’

Diana now acknowledges she was also in the throes of post-natal depression and, after not sleeping for six days, decided she could no longer go on.

She visited her GP fearing that what she was about to reveal would not only destroy her own life, but ruin that of her family.

‘I realised my husband would probably divorce me and that I would lose everything, but I loved them all so much, I felt I had to do whatever it took to make the children safe.

‘My GP was wonderful and referred me to a local psychiatrist, and as Rob drove me to see him, I mentally said goodbye to the children and prepared to leave the hospital in a police van.

‘When the psychiatrist gave me the diagnosis of OCD in that first appointment and reassured me I would not harm anyone, I could not believe it. I surely had an untreatable personality disorder. He told me I needed CBT and prescribedanti-depressants which helped me sleep and eat so I could start the therapy.’

CBT requires patients to test their fears, which helps them realise they are grossly exaggerated. Diana had CBT every fortnight for three months with Rob attending the first sessions.

She spent an hour listing her greatest fears and discussing how she could confront and reality-test them, organising times to work through them at home.

‘This turned out to be hard work, but it was fascinating watching the therapist draw things out of me, getting me to reveal my inner world,’ she says. ‘I was given homework– recording how I felt when thoughts came in and later how Ifelt when I allowed them to wash over me.

‘It was about reality-testing; if I had a thought while peeling potatoes that I was going to harm my baby with a blade, instead of going up to the bathroom cupboard and throwing all the razor blades away, I would unwrap one and have it out in front of the bathroom mirror, telling the blade, “You are not going to win; I’mnot afraid of you any more.”

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‘About 75 per cent of sufferers respond to CBT. I had just five one hour sessions over three months. After that, I was able to deal with intrusive thoughts that still crept in.

For example, if I was going up an escalator in a department store and had a feeling I was going to pick up a child and throw her off, I could look over the escalator, imagine it happening and neutralise the thought.

‘It’s very difficult to do this, but a therapist can help you learn to live with the kind of uncertainty that prevents some OCD sufferers even crossing the road in case they kill themselves.’

Dr Anne Perry, a consultant psychiatrist who specialises in the treatment of OCD at the Priory in East Sussex, says: ‘Many OCD sufferers are convinced that something bad is going to happen and they will be responsible. What differs themfrom the vast majority of people who have random intrusive thoughts– that they might jump under a train when standing at a platform, or throw their baby out of the window – is that they don’t recognise them as normal, and feel they could be at risk of acting them out.

‘OCD is fairly common, affecting up to two per cent of the population, across the whole age, gender and socio-economic range. But it is often very secretive, and sufferers don’t tell anybody and don’t realise treatment is available.’

CBT is available on the NHS and Diana runs a support group in her area. ‘Sufferers and their families can come and just listen,’ says Diana. ‘It’s really difficult for families; in some cases lovers have to become carers. My husband had no idea what I was going through, but I have told him and all my daughtersexcept the youngest and they are incredibly supportive.’

Rob says: ‘All I could see was the depression, which was very difficultto live with, but after CBT I could see the benefits, especially after Diana explained what had been happening.

‘I certainly never felt shocked or repelled about the things she had feared because I knew they were never going to happen. That is not to say I didn’t see how real and frightening it had been for Diana.’

Diana once imagined her dotage as a grey old lady in Broadmoor. Now she says: ‘Instead, I’m watching four lovely girls who can see their mother actually enjoying being a mum. That’s something I was never able to do before, however dearly I loved them all. Now I want to tell others about it and, in my case, how CBTsaved my life.’

● Details of local support groups and the annual OCD conference at Churchill College, Cambridge, on December 4 are at www.ocduk.org.